Public invited to talk on Lincoln and the abolition of slavery

President Lincoln writing the Proclamation of Freedom. January 1, 1863, painted by David Gilmour Blythe, lithograph. United States Library of Congress Prints and Photographs division under the digital ID ppmsca.18444

Lawrence Goodheart, Professor of History at UConn’s Greater Hartford Campus, will present a talk on Abraham Lincoln and emancipation, as the second in a series of Civil War programs hosted by the Mansfield Historical Society. The public is invited to attend at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, May 13.

The talk will be held in the Buchanan Auditorium at the Mansfield Public Library (54 Warrenville Road/Route 89 in Mansfield Center). Admission is free for members and children under 16; $3 for non-members.

Reacting to forces that he acknowledged were beyond his control, Lincoln came to realize that in order to preserve the Union, slavery had to be abolished.

As nationalism and emancipation triumphed over secession and slavery, the United States underwent a momentous Second American Revolution.

Dr. Goodheart will examine the evolution of Lincoln’s thought and policies on slavery based on his writings, including the House Divided Speech, his First Inaugural Address, the Emancipation Proclamation, the Gettysburg Address and others.

Since 1990, Lawrence B. Goodheart has taught U.S. history, African American history, and the Civil War at UConn’s Greater Hartford Campus.

During 1994-1995, he taught in the Department of History at Bilkent University (Ankara, Turkey) and during 2009-2010 in the Department of American Culture and Literature at Hacettepe University (Ankara, Turkey).

He was co-director of “Integrating Human Rights into Your High School Curriculum: A Professional Development Institute for Educators” that was sponsored by the Coalition of Human Rights Organizations of New England at UConn in June 2005.

During the first part of 2011, he served as Acting State Historian.

His publications have been on capital punishment, psychiatry, abolitionism, and related issues.

His books include Mad Yankees: The Hartford Retreat for the Insane and Nineteenth Century Psychiatry (2003) and The Solemn Sentence of Death: Capital Punishment in Connecticut (2010).

Posted May 2, 2011

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